The Shotgun Blog

Monday, January 12, 2009

Excerpt from Ric Dolphin's latest posting...

Back home with our scotches, waiting for the last year of the decade to
dawn, my brothers-in-law and I considered how the
Zeroes or the Oughts
- or whatever this decade will be called - will be remembered. What will define it in people's memories?
Probably terrorism and its offshoots: 9/11 and the aftermath, the War on Terror, Homeland Security, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan ... the Great Satan
squaring off against the Lions of Islam.

It will doubtlessly be a more definable decade than the 1990s. None of us could figure out the defining characteristic of those final ten years of the 20th century. Most other decades seemed to have had vivid identities - the roaring Twenties, the Dirty Thirties, the wartime Forties, the prosperous, grey-flannel Fifties, the hippy-dippy Sixties, the Me-generation
1970s, the Greedy 1980s. But what were the 1990s? Grant suggested The Internet Decade, but then dismissed the idea because the
Internet really didn't become commonplace until the current decade.
Ditto cellphones. So although true that the digital
communications revolution started in the 1990s, I don't think you
can say it defined them. The final decade of the millennium should have something to define it. Maybe its lack of identity defines it. The Lost Decade? I welcome your thoughts.

As
for the prospects going into 2009, your guess is as good as mine. The economic predictions
are so dire it could happen that the recession helps define the decade, along with the terror stuff. Decade of Woe? Regarding the financial meltdown, there is a perverse part of me that says, Bring it on.
Let's see what a real Depression is like. Give us the kind of privations
with which to bore our grandkids that our grandparents bored us with. Hey, Ma, we cain't afford meat this month. Let's fry up the dawg...

Comments

the 90s.. from where I was sitting was the decade of connecting

Not just elecronicaly RE the internet, although that was indeed an important aspect of connecting, but all kinds of connecting: socially, financially, selfishly, internationally, spiritually, environmentally,- culturally, even half assed politically etc etc.. it took the whole decade to hook up these networks..whether they were shopping networks, peanut allery alert networks.. what have you- profound or petty- it was a hook up of some kind-- developing the will to reach out and maybe even participate in the world after generations of just watching other people do things, reading about other people far away and stars of culture nearby calling all the shots, then turning the page and forgetting them...back to that small insular existance over coffee

the 90s created the hunger to connect- and the internet was a convenient vehicle playground for all this connecting to happen...search history,, the last decade of any century you might choose is a desperate trash fire of useless comeons, a dark and heavy re evaluation of everything..the game is hard and fast and cruel and dark impulses long hidden creep out and are paraded about..

and then the first decade of most any new century is so very hopeful-- old lingering sins are forgiven forgotten or covered up--and fresh new ideas- even neglected good old ones are tried out.. there is a certain rush of all things good in the opening decade of a new century--sort of how there is a certain race to flush and erace in the last decade of a century..

connections though,, the 90s was a remarkable decade of everyday people connections that didn't really deliver in the 90s, but the configurations of the 90s certainly delivered to everyday people in the opening few years of the 21st century

If it wasn't for the brave new network experience, Starbucks may have failed as an overpriced coffee shop, and the Gap would just be one more rag house..

Posted by: 419 | 2009-01-12 8:16:09 PM

Nothing seems to be easier than seeing someone whom you can help but not helping.
I suggest we start giving it a try. Give love to the ones that need it.
God will appreciate it.